The digital arts and humanities at the University of Huddersfield

Month: April 2016

The Digital Arts and Humanities Research Group (DAHRG) is holding a one-day course on georeferencing in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, on the 25th of May, 2016.

“Georeferencing” describes the linking of data with a physical location. Most commonly this process is referred to when associating raster data (such as a scanned map or satellite images) with spatial locations in a Geo-Informationsystem (GIS). More recently, the term “georeferencing” is also used in connection with the linking of toponyms with coordinates in digitized texts, which is then often called “geotagging”.

The course will demonstrate how to georeference raster data by using the open source Quantum GIS (QGIS) software, while also discussing alternatives (such as Google Earth). Participants will also learn about geotagging textual information and how to use freely available tools for this purpose.

Dr Alexander von Lünen, Senior Lecturer in Digital Humanities at the University of Huddersfield, co-organized a panel with Dr Sam Griffiths, Lecturer in Spatial Cultures at UCL’s Bartlett School of Architecture, at this year’s Urban History Group meeting in Cambridge (UK) on April 1. The panel discussed the engagement of humans with the built environment in the past and present, including — among other things — how digital tools alter our perception of the city. Also on the panel were Dr Simon Sleight (Kings College London) and Dion Georgiou (Queen Mary University).

The panel comes on the heels of a volume soon to be published called Spatial Cultures, co-edited by Dr von Lünen and Dr Griffiths. Watch this space…